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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503441">Without a Believer</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thebiwife/pseuds/Thebiwife'>Thebiwife</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>What's (Not) Inside: (Lost) Songs From Waitress [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Good Wife (TV), Waitress - Bareilles/Nelson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Song: Without a Believer (Sara Bareilles), Unrequited Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 13:08:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,368</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503441</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thebiwife/pseuds/Thebiwife</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After Owen approaches Will in series 5 to tell him that Alicia and Peter aren't a sure thing, Will puts his thoughts about his and Alicia's professional differences to one side in an attempt to establish what he wants</p><p>Inspired by the Original Waitress Song 'Without a Believer'</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alicia Florrick/Will Gardner</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>What's (Not) Inside: (Lost) Songs From Waitress [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1927399</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Without a Believer</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The craft beer place stood where there once had been many an Irish Pub, not a single one outliving the veteran joints of Chicago. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What can I get you?" the guy behind the counter who looked barely enough to be serving beer asked us.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think I'll have the <em>Small Town Milkshake Stout</em>," Kalinda pondered. I thought it was quite funny she'd suggested we meet here; I think I must be the only friend Kalinda drinks with who she doesn’t tempt with liquor. Well, not <em>always</em>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll try the same," I said, then turning back to Kalinda. "I was barely ten years old when my family moved to <em>Small Town</em> Illinois."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That must've been rough," Kalinda said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It <em>destroyed</em> me, leaving all of my friends behind. I for one would’ve happily stayed put in Baltimore.” When we were new to the area, having moved from the DMV area that couldn’t have been further from Leland, Illinois for ten-year old little Will Gardner. I forget how often I end up talking about my childhood with Kalinda; she’d heard it plenty of times before. She actually laughed at how quaint she found it compared to her own childhood, even the Baltimore part.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t always get to choose the place you’re meant to end up,” Kalinda said, taking a sip of her stout. "You would've never met me if you'd stayed in Baltimore. Nor would you have run into Alicia again after all these years."</span>
</p><p>I nodded, glad Kalinda had brought the subject of Alicia up, making it less bizarre than if I had done myself. <span>“Commitment, Kalinda. What do you think of commitment?”</span></p><p>
  <span>“I think it’s something people <em>do</em>. But I'm not <em>people</em>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know what you mean. You know, I saw Alicia with her daughter, a while back, right after she'd gone missing and you took her home. I went to Alicia, to see if she was ok, but Peter was there. I chose to ignore him, but I couldn't help but see the closeness she had with Grace, and you know I thought </span>
  <em>
    <span>maybe I can do that.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kalinda faintly smiled at me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t think I can?” My question came out more as a statement.</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“<em>No</em>, I think you can do whatever you want. What <em>do</em> you want? That's the question to answer.” her eyes flicked to the side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Something more than just...work.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you mean kids?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’ve spent my whole life getting ahead. Sometimes I take a step back and I can’t figure out why.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"So you mean Alicia?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I hesitated before saying anything more. "Owen said she and Peter aren't a done deal."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you know what Alicia wants?” Kalinda asked me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No. But I’ll ask. If you don’t know something, ask, right?”<br/>
<br/>
</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>A few days later I found myself back at the same craft beer place, alone. I'd been dreaming of the milkshake stout; it reminded me of when I was in late elementary school, going for vanilla milkshakes and blueberry pie after school kicked out. </span>
  <span>Until my parents had let me start driving into Chicago at sixteen, there was little else to do. You can’t go to a drive-in without a car; you can’t go anywhere worth going without having a parent or an overbearing older sibling take you, so you went to get pie. And I did that every week.</span>
</p><p><span>Until I went back to DC for college, it was only natural. </span>Funny that I’d ended up back merely a ninety-minute drive from there. From this pub.<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the LG offices the following day, I had a feeling she would stop by. I could get comfortable, switching from one chair to another, almost entirely distracted by my own discomfort to the extent that I missed her come in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi Will,” Alicia said, smiling softly as she quietly entered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi. It seems like I haven’t seen you in a while.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“I know. I don't work here anymore.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I heard everything’s good with your new offices.”</span>
</p><p>"We're getting there<span>, thank you.” She looked down at her feet. “Will?” she asked in a way that it almost wasn’t a question, but an impending omen</span></p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” I said, trying not to show a reaction to her shaky demeanour. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She didn't say anything else, she just stepped a little closer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I did all I knew I could and I hugged her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She gripped me tight, probably too tight for the office,  but now she wasn't an underling I didn’t care. I had to hold onto every last second of her body touching mine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and again. “I’m gonna miss you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I took in her scent, not wanting to say the wrong thing, not wanting it to look to Diane, through the glass door of our respective offices, that it was anything beyond making up after the last month or so of bickering back and forth.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Saturday morning I woke up aching for her. Not aching for her between my legs, most of those feelings had been resolved when I'd spent a few consecutive nights with Isabel. Although I’m sure I would’ve felt that if I'd let myself. She was <em>Alicia. </em>We went so far back I always had a deeper aching for her, deeper than my flesh and bones, deeper than any blonde with tattoos could ever make me feel.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was already calling her before I realised she’d picked up. I hadn’t really expected her to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will?” she asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are the kids still with Peter every other weekend?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, they're there this weekend. Why, is it something to do with an old case?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s go for a drive, Alicia.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span><br/>
***<br/>
<br/>
</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“At the end of the block over here was where my bus stopped after school. You see that ramshackle hut there? It’s a diner-by-day, bar-by-night kinda place, <em>Maddie’s</em>. After we moved here I started going in there every Friday after school, just to pass time, time that wasn’t just my Mom and I sitting in front of the TV in silence.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alicia got out of the car slowly behind me. I could tell she was unnerved that I had driven her an hour and a half West of the city, most of it in near silence with only the murmurs of WBEZ accompanying us. She had worn her best work attire, clothes which implied that she still was still expecting <em>whatever this was </em>to be professional. Not that she’d ever appeared any different in her </span>
  <em>
    <span>outer </span>
  </em>
  <span>clothing when her intentions had been devious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite me, especially now as Alicia wasn't complicit in my intentions it was never too late for her to threaten a sexual harassment suit, like Diane had always warned against. So I switched my narration to the jovial tone that could sound merely anecdotal until the penny dropped and she knew the true reason why I’d bought her here. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So I met this girl, Maddie.” I laughed at how absurd that sounded, although Alicia was no wiser.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s funny?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess </span>
  <span>now</span>
  <span> I see her as what she was, a woman over three times my age, not a girl, not technically. Her Dad owned this place, and she still worked there fifteen years after he’d died, but there was this same picture of her as a girl on the wall. In the picture she’s on her pink bicycle, about thirteen or fourteen, hair in long braids with braces, the typical all-American daddy’s girl type.  And yet there she was in front of me, almost thirty years older and yet she still had that exact same smile, the same demeanor.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This time Alicia couldn’t stunt her own laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know, couldn’t have been further from who I told myself I should like, even at ten or twelve years old, in either teenage or adult form. But she was significant not because of what she looked like, but because she was the first person who ever treated me like a person, like she cared about me and how I felt, not just how I behaved or made her mad, how I looked or made her appear. She painted my world.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You sound like you were smitten.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just a schoolboy crush.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alicia smiled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank god for this place though, it practically saved me. I turned into a bit of a stoner, those school kids sure didn't take kind to me as the new kid so naturally, I got in with the wrong crowd, the only ones who’d have me. And although I did well at school, I was eccentric, all grand plans and inventions, all of that I would've just thrown away if I hadn’t gone to see Maddie, every Friday after school.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>You</span>
  </em>
  <span> were eccentric?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh God yeah. I had frosted tips.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alicia couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “Sorry, I don’t want to interrupt your beautiful childhood stories. If that’s the only reason you drove me here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Every Friday, she made my day with her kind words, and well, her amazing blueberry pie and ice-cream. Although she had these wispy white-blonde curls that she pinned up in a way that reminded me of that soft serve, and over the years, she developed these curves, probably from eating the stuff every damn day at an age where it didn’t just fall off of you. And then almost ten years later, after she encouraged me every summer I was back here that I should apply to Georgetown Law, and I finally went back East, where I yearned to go back since we left the area as a kid, and I met you. So, to this day</span>
  <span> you remind me of her</span>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alicia laughed again. "Not the compliment I expected."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not a bad thing! She was sexy too! In a different way. But when </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> first smiled at me at that pool party, it was like you were her. You had the same spirit. You still do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I leant in to kiss Alicia. She held her hand up to stop me, so I dodged my initial target of her lips and landed a peck on her cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was only once I went to Law School and met you, Alicia, that I could see that sometimes a little change can be good. Even if I hadn't run back to DC for college, if I’d not been dragged here kicking and screaming as a kid, I would never have met Maddie, never have talked to her about everything on my mind, never have worked out that I wanted to be a lawyer. And never have been told that I </span>
  <em>
    <span>could be one</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>"Will..."</p><p>
  <span>“What I’m trying to say, Alicia, is that by listening, she made me realise not only what I could realistically achieve, but that we need people in our lives to support us to enable that. And you being here with me demonstrates that </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>is what I’m missing. I’m not here to find Maddie, hell, I don’t want to know if she’s even alive. But I couldn’t think of a better place to say this to you. I want to be with you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will please tell me you are not trying to…?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I interrupted her before she could finish her sentence. “I’ve come to realise Alicia, all we need as humans is someone to care for.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Please, stop.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I took her by the hand into the bar. The bell above the door jangled as we walked in, and it was half-full with the late afternoon crowd, who definitely swayed closer to its evening clientele, with their Budweiser and peanuts and burgers. My heart fluttered as I saw that they still had that blueberry pie under the counter. “One slice of that pie, with ice cream, please sir, and a Vanilla Milkshake.” I ordered from the gentleman. I looked up behind where he had stood merely seconds ago and still saw that picture of a teenage Maddie, hair in braids and a metal smile grinning back at me. I couldn't help but smile as I saw her, and I sat Alicia on the stool opposite the photo.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bartender passed us two dessert forks, gladly helping me avoid the awkwardness of a </span>
  <em>
    <span>one fork or two</span>
  </em>
  <span> scenario. I sat atop the stool next to Alicia, putting to bed her fears of a public humiliation in a small town where she knew no-one. She visibly relaxed as she realised that the pie and milkshake were all that I had planned, and once it arrived she nibbled cautiously at the bite of purple fruit and buttery crust I fed her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You care for everyone around you but there’s nobody there to care for you. No-one who’s there behind the scenes to listen and root for you, no-one to grant you your wishes, someone to simply be glad that you’re there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will, I have my kids. I’m not alone.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes and it’s your job to look after </span>
  <em>
    <span>them</span>
  </em>
  <span>. But what good's giving everybody else a hand, at home, at work, if nobody is there when you need holding? I can’t imagine how you will cope when they're no longer living at</span>
  <span> home.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will, I don’t understand...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m just trying to say,” I interrupted, “when everything else falls away, in the days after your kids leave home, or something tragic happens in your life, I don’t want that to destroy you because you’re alone. I don’t want you to be alone. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>want to be there, with you. I want to grow old with you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m married, Will.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alicia, please just listen,” I held my hands together on the bridge of my nose. “This is not a proposition. I know you don’t even know what’s going to happen with Peter and I certainly don’t. I don’t need everything on a plate in front of me now. All I know is that this is what I want, the way I knew I wanted </span>
  <em>
    <span>this pie</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>this ice cream</span>
  </em>
  <span> here on a plate to share with you. I just want you to know that I have that dream, for when you’re ready to live it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will, I can’t promise you that.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you said you could, it wouldn’t be a dream, would it?”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As a blonde with tattoos myself, I hope any others don't take offence.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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